I have more or less 0 knowledge in low-level topics, so forgive my possible ignorance.
I know that in languages such as C, pointers hold 'memory addresses', i.e. strings (or binary data?) written in ...

I'm working through a problem in Programming Pearls -- specifically, the implementation of a program which sorts a file containing, at most, 10,000,000 integers (Column 1, Problem 3). Since the book ...

I'm planning to implement a simple VM/interpreter kind of thing for a simple language I'm making. The compiler of the language emits mostly stack-oriented instructions to be executed by the VM.
The ...

Lately I've been asking a lot of questions here about VMs. Here's another one:
I understand that often stack based VMs use only one stack - the call stack - for everything. E.g. it is also used for ...

I'm reading a compiler textbook that compiles to some form of assembly. Since I don't know this assembly language I decided to invent my own simple "assembly language" and implement a basic "virtual ...

If I write a C program and compile it to an .exe file, the .exe file contains raw machine instructions to the CPU. (I think).
If so, how is it possible for me to run the compiled file on any computer ...

Consider two programming languages: Both run on a VM, have the same amount of abstraction levels between the programmer and the OS and CPU, etc.
The only difference is inside the languages themselves ...

I have a general idea of how the processor handles instructions but spend my time working in mostly high level languages. Maybe somebody who works closer to the iron can provide some valuable insight.
...

I just wonder if there exists better (i.e. faster?) way to get the next
power of 2 for a given number than the following one (maybe some
better sort of "bit-twiddling" hack is possible?) ...
static ...

I currently work as a .net developer and have coming up to 3 years experience in the industry as well as a degree in computer science specifically software engineering (I know that means nothing but ...

Suppose there are two threads, which communicate by asynchronously sending data messages to each other. Each thread has some kind of message queue.
My question is very low level: What can be expected ...

As an experienced web-developer, but a novice "low level" programmer, this stuff is sort of voodoo to me still.
I'm curious about how one would even begin to go about finding a memory block, and then ...

There used to be very good reasons for keeping instruction / register names short. Those reasons no longer apply, but short cryptic names are still very common in low-level programming.
Why is this? ...

I realize that this question is similar to Low level programming - what's in it for me, but the answers didn't really address my question well. Part from just an understanding, how exactly does your ...

I'm currently studying engineering in Telecommunications and Electronics and we have migrated from assembler to C in microprocessor programming. I have doubts that this is a good idea. What are some ...

Or in other words, what specific problems did automated garbage collection solve? I've never done low-level programming, so I don't know how complicated can freeing resources get.
Update - apologies ...

I am reading the book The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles, which contains projects encompassing the build of a computer from boolean gates all the way ...

I'm about 3 years experience as .NET developer, but I'm sad I haven't gotten to create anything that excites me because I'm just using puzzle pieces someone else has already created.
I learned most ...

Some languages, for exemple java, introduced a low pause GC.
Those GC can do most of the work without pausing the whole world. This is obviously a quite hard problem because it require to analyze the ...

I been contacted to do some work remote controlling LEDs displays over TCP/IP, but my experience and preparation is mostly about high-level programming language. I said that to the person who contact ...

I typically run across gurus at SO and other places (instructors, book authors etc.) that would say something along the lines "This will cause alignment issues" or other low level tidbits.
I want to ...

Recently I have started working for company which is developing mainly low level stuff (like device drivers, system level apps etc.). I was hired as high level programmer to develop a machine learning ...

Sorry for the very abstract and uncertain question, but I guess if I could ask it better I would have answered it myself. Here is the thing.
I am getting more and more interested in FPGA. However, it ...

So, today I looked at Arduino; seems very interesting. I still don't want to shell out the money just yet, as I have some questions, namely:
Should I learn something about electronics? What and with ...

In what way(s) is LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) Low Level? (At the time of writing, I did not find this expansion of the abbreviation "LLVM" on its web site, but on Wikipedia.)
Is it called "Low ...

I'm a Unix programmer and I need to write a (hopefully simple) program for Windows that does the following:
(1) Installs from a USB drive
(2) Somehow integrates with the OS at a low-level in such a ...

I have done some hobby application development, but now I'm interested in checking out systems programming (mainly operating systems, Linux kernel etc.). I know low-level languages like C, and I know ...